Haven is a recidivist. She is one of those curses of the judicial system’s revolving door, repeating her offenses as soon as she is released – systematically unable to reform and generally unwilling to put much effort into it.  

She is 3.  

Haven is sent to time-out so often that all her mother has to do anymore is to say her name and nod toward the porch step and she will plod off in that direction. That’s where she does her time. 

I channeled my inner Johnny Cash and sat with her on Saturday and composed a song that is sort of a 3-year-old’s version of “Folsom Prison Blues.” 

My momma said to slow down but I sped up 
Now I’m feelin’ low down ‘cause she’s fed up 
I dug myself a hole and I can’t climb out 
Stuck here on this porch step she calls time out 
I sit here feelin’ rotten, like a child what’s been forgotten 
With the miseries that go down to my shoes 
The other kids are havin’ fun but I ain’t havin’ none 
I got the Little Haven, sadly misbehavin’ blues. 

It was not a hit with everybody. My niece, the mother of the child, apparently thought singing country music songs, yodeling and giggling was undermining the discipline, so she says to me with kind of a derisive snort, “I bet YOU were in time-out a lot.” 

It was a good assumption but a mistaken one. We didn’t have time-out in the 1950s, except the ones in football and basketball games. We had whippings. 

I am not going to get all nostalgic about boards, belts, backhands and bruises and how full-contact behavioral adjustment improved children. But I’m not sold on modern ways, either. My time as a teacher showed me the shortcomings of the all-positive, no-such-thing-as-wrong approach.  

It seems to me that the best combination of psychology and Old Testament justice was contained in one phrasemothers used in rural Tennessee.  

“Go cut me a switch!” 

If you wanted to alter the behavior of a backyard full of kids who were getting out of hand, nothing worked better. The punishment started as soon as the words were uttered and the prospect of what was about to happen got into the child’s head. The switching itself didn’t hurt any worse than half the things we did for fun, but the dread of it was awful. The child is also made a partner in the process. “How big a branch should I cut?” is just another way of asking, “What do I deserve?”  By being part of the decision-making process, the child has to consider the nature and severity of the offense, serving as his own judge and putting himself in the parent’s place.  

The other kids, almost all equally guilty, watch the proceedings in stunned silence, many murmuring that they will never do anything wrong ever again. Sometimes they cry more than their condemned colleague. 

Meanwhile, it gives the parent a little time to cool off and get over what happened – maybe even see things from the child’s point of view and realize it was just a kid being a kid. About as often as not, by the time a kid got back with a switch, there was no longer any need for one. The message had been sent and received. 

Sitting here about 65 years later, it seems like a sublime system, but it does beg one question. If it worked so well, why don’t I behave any better than Haven? 

I think I will go sit on the porch step and think about that one.